


If the Angels Fall

by freddiejoey



Category: Arthur of the Britons
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-31
Updated: 2011-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-23 07:18:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/247646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freddiejoey/pseuds/freddiejoey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hoxel takes his revenge.......</p>
            </blockquote>





	If the Angels Fall

Part One

The day that the messenger comes really begins much like any other. Early in the frosty morning I finish making a cake with rosemary, cinnamon, apples and honey – a Roman recipe bequeathed by my mother - and set it out on the longhouse table for the midday meal. However, when I return at noon, I find the room in an uproar. Arthur has said something to offend Rowena and she has retaliated by throwing the first thing at hand towards his head – which just happens to be my meticulously prepared cake. You would think that the silly man would learn. After all, this is her third baby and she has less than half a season left before she will be brought to bed.

Now Rowena is weeping furiously as she seeks to scoop up the ruined mass from the rushes, Arthur is attempting some sort of ineffectual apology and Kai is stretched out on a bench in front of the fire, laughing so hard that he can neither speak or move. I shoot him a severe look and indicate that he should go and fetch Llud and the children. He tries to look sober, utterly fails and flashes me the smile that has made me weak-kneed since I was twelve. Now I transfer the reproachful look to his brother. “You can tell the children that there isn’t anything sweet now.” Arthur looks startled. It feels good to consternate the leader of the Celtic alliance. I bend down and tell Rowena not to worry. Let the dogs deal with it. By this time I am biting my lip as well. Life in the longhouse is anything but dull.

An hour later the messenger rides in. He is nondescript – later I will be able to recall precisely nothing notable about him. His horse I walk past on the way to the water trough – it is brown, with a white blaze on its forehead and the usual markings of an animal that is designated as belonging to the Jutes. So one of Yorath’s men – no doubt with a communication for his daughter and Arthur. I think no more about it and go back to the salve-making in my hut. But a little later Theo appears in the doorway, looking worried. “Daddy wants you down in the longhouse.” This time the atmosphere is much different – tense and apprehensive and overwrought. The message has indeed been from Yorath – a message, stamped with his seals, informing Rowena that he is dying.

Rowena is oddly calm. “I must go to him. At once. There will be so much…” Her voice trails away bleakly. My eyes meet Kai’s across her cropped head. He knows what I am thinking – that she is far too heavy with child to travel safely on horseback. Yet I do not intervene. Had my own father lived and now been sick unto death, I too might have made the same decision, taken the same risk. Arthur is deep in conversation with his brother and father. There is so much to discuss and arrange and no time. However this is something they are skilled at – negotiating and delegating.

Very soon, the preparations are in place: Arthur will take Rowena to Yorath’s and Kai and Llud will stay behind in the village since there have been rumours of the Scots amassing an army to the south – vague rumours it is true with the snows so near but you never knew. I see that Kai is extremely anxious; part of him would like to be riding north with his little brother. But he is also a warrior and his chieftain’s lieutenant – he will always do his duty, even if it sometimes breaks his heart.

I help Rowena to ready herself, reassure her that Kaitlin and Luc will be untroubled while she is gone (doing a fine job of dissembling here since any three- and seven-year-olds, no matter how well cared for, will be fragile once both of their loving parents suddenly leave). If matters concerning Yorath prove lengthy, then Rowena’s child may well be born in her own village – moreover, worry over her father could mean an early arrival. I am well acquainted with Yorath’s healer Cath and I admire her knowledge. Nevertheless, I press certain bags of herbs into Rowena’s hands – if anything untoward were to happen………….

It is almost sunset by the time everything has been attended to. Arthur and Kai have been closeted together inside the longhouse for a time and when they emerge I can see that Kai is close to tears. My throat tightens – oh my poor beautiful husband….. Arthur is taking a young attendant with him, Drew, a chestnut-haired youngster of eighteen. He stands quietly waiting with his horse at the bottom of the ramp.

Kaitlin is very much her father’s daughter – straight-backed, emotions strictly mastered when eyes are upon her. But Kai has to peel a protesting Luc from Arthur and hand him firmly to Llud. Then Arthur swings on to his horse’s back and Kai helps Rowena to settle comfortably in front of his brother.

I have a sudden memory from long ago, another occasion when Kai had helped Rowena more briskly on to horseback in front of the laughing villagers. She had come seeking Arthur’s help to free a group of Saxon women and was given short shrift at first – although she got her way in the end. I hadn’t been jeering at her like the rest however – I’d been far too busy envying her for feeling Kai’s hands at her waist……..Now I shake my head furiously, bringing myself back to the present. I sense rather than see Arthur and Kai exchange one last look that would sear some lesser souls and then we wave the white horse and Drew’s brown horse off – and Arthur and Rowena are gone.

The longhouse suddenly seems very quiet. Llud is far from his usual cheery self and Kai is completely abstracted . I decide to put all five children to sleep in the longhouse. Luc falls asleep crying for his mother, curled up with Maeve and Kai bundles Theo and Cedric into his old bed. Kaitlin has her own sleeping nook and insists that she will be alright alone. Yet when I look in on her later she has fallen asleep with wet cheeks – so exactly like Arthur that one. Llud wanders up to Olwen’s hut just before midnight. I realise all over again what a hole Yorath’s passing will make in the fabric of life- I have grown fond of the obstinate old Jutish chieftain and deep down Rowena adores her father.

Kai is sitting slumped drowsily in front of the hearth. He has drunk far too much mead. I hold out my hand. “Come to bed.” He smiles sadly, puts his hand in mine and follows me into the bedroom. I lay down beside Kai, breathing in his lovely musky scent, smoothing back the golden gossamer thread that is his hair. Eventually I sleep – but I know when the dawn light starts peering through the thatch, that my husband has lain wakeful for most of the night.

Arthur rides through the night, accompanied by Drew. It is bitterly cold and he prays that the snow holds off. Usually it is a day and a half’s energetic ride to Yorath’s village. However Rowena’s condition means that it will have to be undertaken in steady stages. She sleeps cradled against him for some of the time and weeps now that her children aren’t able to see. There will be a hundred grim practical matters to be resolved with Yorath’s passing, as well as their personal grief – Rowena will become the leader of the Jutes and undoubtedly opposition to a woman’s rule will assert itself.

Yet that is in the future. For now, Arthur is acutely aware of how he would feel if it were Llud in Yorath’s place and is simply anxious for Rowena to reach her father safely and in ample time. Just after dawn they stop to eat and stretch, then continue on. It is still early morning and Rowena is dozing again, when Arthur hears the cry for help.

It comes from the copper-tinged undergrowth at the side of the trail. Standing there is a thin tow-haired youth, dressed in a tattered jerkin and breeches that are far too thin for the crisp season. “Can you help?” His voice is as thin as his clothes. “It’s my mother…..please.” Arthur bends down to Rowena. “I’ll see what the trouble is…..he’s just a boy.” She shivers as he dismounts and she loses the warmth of his body. Leaving Drew holding the white horse’s reins, Arthur walks cautiously across to the boy. Up close, his skin is bluish with the cold and he is painfully bony. “Where is your mother? Is she ill?” Then eerily the youth smiles – Arthur realises that he can be no more than fifteen. “No, but you’d better see to your wife.” The boy’s teeth are black and crooked in his pinched face. There is the sound of a painful cry and a heavy thud behind him.

Suddenly rigid with fear, Arthur turns around and looks back towards Rowena. On the frost-bitten ground lies Drew, a dagger buried to its hilt in his chest, a bright crimson ribbon of blood snaking its way across his outflung woollen cloak. Arthur knows at once that he is dead. Rowena sits as still as chilled stone, eyes distended with terror – standing beside the white horse, with a knife held against her swollen stomach, is Hoxel the Saxon.

Part Two  
How severely can you berate yourself for condemning your wife and unborn child because of your stupidity and carelessness, because the need to help others is in your blood as Llud so often says? How many times upbraid yourself for the death of a fine young warrior, at the advent of his life? Relentlessly while your wife, heavy with child, is forced to guide your horse through the forest while you stumble alongside, your hands brutally bound behind you, a raving maniac holding a knife to your throat and his gaunt companion yielding another beside your wife’s slender white neck.

After what seems like an interminable passage, compounded by foreboding, they pitch into a small clearing containing a ramshackle wicker-work hut. Roughly Hoxel flings Rowena from the horse and trusses her wrists behind her – then prods her and Arthur inside the hut. It is divided into two small rooms, both dank and fetid and glacial. He forces them into the back area: compelling them to sit, roping Arthur’s ankles together and then lingering, glowering by the door.

When he starts to speak Rowena realises through her horrified torpor that she has not yet heard him speak – it is his lean ill-clad accomplice who has managed all the talking. Hoxel’s voice is very deep, very resonant – completely indelible. “So”, he looks at Arthur, eyes glittering with zeal, mouth twisted in a fiendish grin, “ At last….I have had to wait – through being cast out by my own people because you made me lose the hostages I could have once exchanged for the price of your village, through years of being a mercenary in Gaul – but finally I have been able to return. I was unlucky to fail with your brother in the spring. Then your father thought he could hunt me down but I was too slippery for the old man.” And Rowena is shattered by the realisation that this is the Saxon who had almost killed Kai last spring.

Arthur’s answer is low and distinct. “How many years Hoxel since you took us prisoner the first time and tried to hunt Kai and Llud as if they were wild game? You did not succeed then. You did not succeed with your murderous plan in the spring. Kai lived. You won’t succeed now.” Hoxel’s demented smile widens. “No? I must disagree. Certainly, my messenger claiming that Yorath the Jute was sick unto death was convincing enough. Pity that the greedy young man is now food for the worms. I’m also very confident that your father and brother will hasten here once they learn that I hold their beloved chieftain and his teeming-with-child wife as my captives.” Then he leans down and clouts Arthur ferociously across the face.

“But you still don’t understand do you – why I hate with a strength that you will never fathom. I presume that you think you love this fucking slattern who carries your whelp. Well, when you rescued your Kai and your Llud all those years ago you took from me the one person who was my life – strangled with your hands. You took from me my Galt.” And he stalks out, slamming the door into place.

Arthur listens to his retreating footsteps and looks across the murky icy room at Rowena. “Are you alright…the baby?” For answer, she tips her head forward and copiously expels the contents of her stomach. Then she sits back, shivering and breathing far too rapidly. Arthur recognises that she has plunged from draining sorrow over Yorath’s supposed fatal illness into a bottomless pit of fear – for him, for the child inside her, for herself. Rowena’s voice is a raspy whisper. “That man Galt he speaks of…..his lover.” Slowly Arthur nods. “Yes, I killed him in order to save Kai and Llud - as they will do whatever is necessary now for you and me. They will come…and the children will always be safe with Lenni….”

She stares at him, rigid and dry-eyed. “Tell me – what happened the first time this Hoxel…please just keep talking….” Shuffling closer so that she can at least put her head against his shoulder, Arthur softly recounts the full story of that rescue mission: duping Mark, requisitioning the long boat, the perilous journey deep into Saxon territory, the successful retrieval of Kai and Llud and lastly, the foolhardy return to reclaim the monastery treasure. Rowena has always known the broad details, but now she listens covetously to every quiet syllable that her husband utters as a way of distracting her awry imaginings, as a means of anchoring her fragile reality….

Ominously, Hoxel appears in the doorway. His gaze gleams with the sheen of mania. Arthur has been waiting for this. He has simply been praying to his One God that when it happens it will be he and not Rowena whom the Saxon rough handles into the next room – it will from him that the token is taken. His wish is granted. Hoxel twists his bound hands even more cruelly until Arthur is sure that he can feel and hear the snapping of fine bone. Rowena’s eyes widen in terror and her mouth drops open but no words come out. Arthur knows that she is paralysed with fear.

Hoxel laughs – a chilling echo in the frigid enclosed room. Without warning he thrusts out his boot and sends Rowena reeling with a savage blow to the side of her head. Laughing almost hysterically at Arthur’s futile gesture of fury with his bound hands and feet. “You can have your chieftain husband back a little later. I’m going to have some overdue sport with him first.” And he drags Arthur into the next room and locks the door.

Rowena is left alone in the dark. She is sitting in a puddle of urine and her waist is bathed in vomit. The ropes around her wrists have already chafed deep red welts. But these just seem like inconsequential physical abstractions. The real source of horror is what she can hear but cannot see happening on the other side of the door. She can hear Arthur’s groans of pain, the sound of heavy blows, Hoxel’s deranged laughter and rambling monologues, once a terrible scream – and then an even more terrible silence.

Arthur’s child kicks hard against her ribs. Rowena realises that she has urinated again – a hot sticky stinking morass – and that she has been holding her breathe so intensely that her throat throbs. Then the door slowly opens and Hoxel’s leering face appears. He says nothing – simply grins demonically and throws an insensible Arthur at her feet. When she sees what has been done to her husband, Rowena at last starts to cry.

Part Three

Kai has taken our sons and some of the other village boys up to the high meadow for weapons training. I know their swords are still fashioned from wood – yet each time I see them thus engaged, as a mother it buffets my heart. More particularly since the so recent time when my husband was wounded by a renegade Saxon, destined not to live, and yet was spared by a miracle……

Theo I know revels in the exercises and already displays his father’s preference for and skill with the axe. But no matter – it is a foreordained part of life and must therefore be endured. And it is keeping Kai busy. I am aware that he is preoccupied and edgy - intensely missing his brother. They never do well apart.

I am standing at the longhouse table, plaiting Kaitlin’s thick sable hair and debating whether to bake another batch of bread when the door sentry admits a tall fair young man in bright green. He bows stiffly and holds out a cloth-wrapped package. “Greetings. This is for Kai, brother of your chieftain. From Mark, King of Cornwall.” Kaitlin looks up idly from the parchment she is scribbling words on and I take the parcel, smiling. This is nothing rare – communications often arrive from Mark and are despatched in return. The messenger gives another formal bow and leaves.

Kaitlin jumps up and then cocks her head, listening. “That must be the messenger’s horse galloping off. Funny, I would have thought he was hungry and thirsty.” For a reason that I will never fully understand, I do not act as I normally always would - I do not simply put the parcel aside until Kai comes down from the meadow and give it to him then. Instead, I unknot the binding from around the package. My fingers begin to tremble and I am clumsy. But then I pull the contents free.

From the soft doeskin package, on to the table, falls a rain of silky dark hair. I recoil in surprise, then dawning horror. I know at once whose head it has been roughly cropped from. Since I was a girl, I have been coming to the longhouse twice a season to cut it and I have just been braiding its exact replica……Turning with my back to the table, so Kaitlin will not see, I tell her as calmly as I can to run to the meadow and fetch her uncle. When she has gone, I sink on to the bench, head dizzy, eyes welling, heart thudding…..

I will never forget the look that Kai gives me as he holds his brother’s shorn hair in his hands. I cannot describe it in words, not even in feelings – horror, dread, rage, derangement. These are all a part of it – yet none even come close. I think for a moment that Kai will fall but he holds steady – because he knows that he has to. He opens the rough square of parchment that is nestled inside the grisly parcel.

Later I discover what tale it tells. How it whispers that one of Yorath’s disgruntled followers provided Hoxel with the means to falsify the message claiming that the Jutish chieftain was dying. How that sham messenger now lies with his throat cut in a distant coppice. That Kai is to tell no-one about this missive but is to travel to a certain destination accompanied only by Llud. That Hoxel has a scout watching outside our village and that any deviation from his instructions will result in Arthur and Rowena’s deaths………….

I watch my husband readying himself for a mission with no certain conclusion – for a dark journey into a place that is utterly unlit….Arthur… Rowena…their child. I tell him about the herbs I gave Rowena….they may prove useful if anything has happened… Then there seems to be nothing adequate enough to say, but still my fingers refuse to be still. “Be careful, only two seasons ago you faced death yourself with a wound so grievous…” Kai fingers the edge of his axe. “Yes and he saved me, his love, and now if …it will have been for naught. I couldn’t bear to… ” His voice dies away, choked by tears. In response I become brisk. I take his face between my hands for a moment and then release him since I need my fingers to speak. “You and Llud needs must…..” There is really no more to say or sign now.

The hardest part is letting them go and yet pretending that nothing is wrong. Kai and Llud are going hunting, simply that – and indeed they are, but not for boar or deer. There is the need not to alarm anyone in the longhouse or indeed the rest of the village. Hoxel has said he has a scout watching - therefore no risk must be taken….And now I finally know just how bloodthirsty this lunatic truly is. When all his preparations are in place, Kai sits me down and says, quite gently but starkly, that it was Hoxel who gave him his fatal wound back in the spring. That he had recognized him that day from the time so long ago when he held them captive and Arthur borrowed Mark’s longboat….

I am as stunned as if Kai’s wound had been inflicted yesterday. “Hoxel tried to kill you already- twice.” Kai kisses my clenched fists. “Yes, the day he gave me this” – and he gestures toward the ridged scar on his stomach under his studded tunic – “he was like a man possessed, driven by something even stronger than hate…” I am as speechless as a mute can ever be. Then I straighten my shoulders. “Why did you not tell me before?” Kai shrugs bleakly. “There seemed no need – he was just another murderous Saxon - but when Llud went out tracking them he was one of the few who escaped.” To wreak his brutal vengeance all over again………

So what do you do? You reassure the children that you have heard from Yorath’s village and that he is growing better – that is one worry you can at least assuage. You pray that the children will not notice and question why Kai and Llud have tears in their eyes as they say farewell before simply leaving to hunt. You have a tender moment alone with the man who is like a father to you and who is the grandfather of your children. You hold your husband as if you never want to let him go – which you don’t- and you kiss him as if there will be no tomorrow – which there may not. You stand outside the longhouse as if there is nothing unusual about this expedition and wave them off, with bright eyes and drumming heart - “Good hunting, bring us back a fat boar and some juicy venison.” You watch them ride away. Then you ask Olwen to mind the children for a short while and lock yourself into your hut to weep as if all the angels have fallen out of the sky and Lucifer has gained mastery of the world – because it is true………….

Part Four

It is unmitigated horror now. Arthur lies senseless and stupefied among the filthy rushes, his shirt rent across his flat stomach and his back. Both are splattered by gruesome bruising – hideous splotches of black and blue, red and purple – as is his face. Rowena is sure that his ribs are ruptured. Hoxel has used his boots and his fists and worse…….

Her petrified eyes travel up to his head. Roughly, ruthlessly Hoxel has used his knife to shear her husband’s dark hair and in so doing has inflicted deep angry gashes across his scalp that are bleeding profusely. He has unleashed his hatred upon her husband’s body. Sobbing helplessly she bends down to listen to his breathing - it is patchy and shallow but Arthur is still with her……

The room is growing increasingly cold and he has no cloak now. So Rowena lies down beside him, desperately attempting to warm his wintry limbs. She has never been sure if she believes in Arthur’s One God. As a Jutish girl she had grown up worshipping goddesses, spirits and ogres, drinking libations at streams, stones and boundaries……But now Rowena closes her eyes and fervently she prays to what she is not sure. Please, please, oh please…….

She is never sure how long later it is that Arthur’s eyes falteringly blink open. His voice is faint and distant. “We’ve done this before – been captured by bloodthirsty Saxons….” Arthur tries to smile, his throbbing face pressed against Rowena’s knees. She would have tried to take his head into her lap, but she has no lap these days. “I was taking you to marry Hecla – he was a murderous bastard too.” Rowena’s voice goes soft. “You were so stiff and formal…..You must honour your word to Hecla you said…and I was already madly in love with you.”

Arthur gives a bark of laughter that quickly turns into a grunt of agony. “You can’t have been….I’d lashed your hands together, forced you to bite your food from the point of my knife…” Rowena squeezes her knees together, desperately trying to pillow his bloody head. “If you remember rightly, I bit your wrist instead….I’d been in love with you for precisely two days, since the moment I saw you ride through the gate of my father’s village, coming to seek horses.” “Oh Rowena….” Arthur’s words trail drowsily away.

There is a long silence and Rowena looks down anxiously, afraid that her husband has succumbed to a stupor again. For a moment Arthur’s eyes flicker open, very blue, glazed with affliction, wet with tears. His voice now is a mere pain-wracked whisper. ‘Do you have a dagger in your magic boots again this time?” Suddenly it is unbearable and so so much more frightening. Rowena starts to weep quietly. “No, but this time I have your baby in my belly.” Sobbing harder, she shifts her legs, trying to afford Arthur more comfort and feels his body grow limp again as darkness engulfs him………………

Llud is uncertain what frightens him more – the hideous prospect of what is overtaking his younger son or the frozen demeanour of his elder. Kai rides ahead of him with a set rigid expression, brown eyes glazed as if he has been afforded a vision of Hades……

The cold is biting and they only halt to relieve themselves. But Kai is impervious to the weather and his own needs. Llud keeps a scrupulous track of the direction in which they are travelling and is able to precisely determine where they need to turn off from the Roman road into the woods. The path is overgrown and serpentine yet Kai is fully confident that his father will lead them to their stipulated destination. And eventually they break through into a frosty clearing, where a desolate hut stands.

It is very quiet. Yet the clearing bellows with portents. Tethered behind the hut is Arthur’s white horse and Drew’s brown one. Lying in a funereal heap beside the door is the lifeless figure of a tall young man with bright golden hair, clad in a cloak and breeches of emerald green. The ruby blood from his slit throat has dried in a sticky river slithering across the iron-hard ground – he has paid dearly for his greed. Kai had not seen the messenger who brought Hoxel’s macabre message but he recognises him from Lenni’s description. He and Llud exchange a penetrating look and slowly dismount. Then the hut door opens with a rasp.

What is slung through it casts Kai into hell. His little brother, barely conscious, threadbare head bleeding, face and body violet-black with bruises. Hoxel appears behind Arthur and hauls him ruthlessly to his feet, a knife grazing his throat. “Throw down that axe and that sword.” His low-toned voice is chilling. There is a loud clang as Kai flings his axe aside and it rings against his father’s sword. Then Llud feels a sharp jab against his ribs and turns to see a youth holding a dagger, blackened teeth leering in a grimace.

“So, tribeless changeling.” Hoxel smirks at Kai, tightening his grasp on Arthur’s neck, “I did not succeed in dispatching you to the nether world last spring. Well, that can easily be remedied.” Kai’s brown eyes flash from his shivering brother back to the rabid Saxon. “You’ll have no more result now Hoxel. If you think to kill all three of us…..” “And Rowena”, he thinks furiously, “where is she?”

Hoxel gives a maniacal chuckle. “Here is what will happen. Firstly you can watch your brother die – and if you move a limb, there is someone else in the hut behind me who will slice the belly of his Jutish whore. It was your brother, you see, who laid waste my life when he took my Galt from me – took him from me so that you and your father could be rescued and live. But you wouldn’t understand that would you? – the kind of love that Galt and I shared, you with your mealy-mouthed healer wife…”

He is startled as Arthur suddenly gives a guttural moan low in his throat and slumps against his encircling arm. Maddened, Hoxel shakes Arthur viciously, but he is completely limp, completely cumbersome. It is then that Hoxel knows he is dead.

The sound of Kai’s slyly amused laugh ringing around the glacial clearing is more unsettling than the most heart-rending roar of denial or grief. “What you said before….that I wouldn’t understand…..me……that’s actually funny considering…….” Hoxel narrows his eyes suspiciously and tosses Arthur’s crumpled body aside. Sneering now at a clearly demented Kai, he runs a disdainful finger down his knife.

Grinning broadly, fully confident, Hoxel flings the knife behind him and draws his axe from his belt. “Well aren’t you going to retrieve the body of your hallowed chieftain?” Deliberately, slowly, Kai takes two steps toward Hoxel, his brown eyes seemingly held spellbound by the Saxon’s intense blue gaze. There appears to be no warning, no signal, but, like lightning, Kai snatches a blade from inside the band of his breeches and Llud stuns the gap-toothed youth with a resounding blow from his silver hand. Enraged, Hoxel raises his axe, two hands clenched around the haft, and lunges at Kai with a sweeping sideways swing.

Abruptly, Kai angles the blade diagonally in front of his face, his right hand clenched around the hilt, the other grasping the blade’s central ridge. Hoxel’s axe clamours against the blade with a deafening metallic reverberation. The smile that wreathes Hoxel’s face is malevolently elated as he notices the blood streaming from Kai’s lacerated left hand.

Grinning wildly, Kai looks up at the Saxon. Hoxel’s face mirrors his sudden uncertainty. In the same heartbeat, Kai thrusts Hoxel ferociously backwards with his blade. Dazed, Hoxel stumbles, then yells in fury as Kai seizes the opportunity to slash him viciously across the arm that clutches his axe. Kai leaps away from Hoxel, still grinning. With one final frenzied effort, Hoxel charges toward Kai - who wheels and whirs the blade through the frosted air in a gilded blur – embedding and twisting it savagely in Hoxel’s chest.

Behind him, as he flies forward, Kai hears his father retrieving his sword and then the youth’s grating death babble. Hoxel lays on his back, still breathing in harsh shallow gulps. Llud rushes past into the hut, shouting through the door that Rowena is inside, alive and alone. Smiling bleakly, Kai looks down at Hoxel. “You see I understand entirely – that was your gravest error” and tenderly he stokes his brother’s cheek. Kai is gratified to see the dawning realisation in Hoxel’s eyes as he raises the Saxon’s own axe and cleaves Hoxel’s head from his body…….

 

Part Five

Lacking certain senses they say makes others more acute. I have never been able to test the truth of this statement but I do know that my sight is much keener than the eyes of many who claim to possess those of a hawk...........So, although it is hardly dawn when I see the first glimmer of white far off through the frost-rimmed trees along the river, I know at once who it is.

Whatever has happened, the children must be sheltered. However I have been anticipating the need for this – I am able to quickly chase them all up to Olwen’s hut, making a game of the race, hoping my unsteady knees will hold. “The men will be back from their hunting this morning. I will need the longhouse tables for skinning and cleaning – and it makes such disarray.” The village is quiet at this time of day – most families are inside their huts, seeking the comfort of their fires and a warm breaking of their fast. Save for the sentries, I could almost be a ghost as I walk back down to the palisade and wait.

Kai appears first, leading a brown horse – Drew’s horse – and with Rowena seated in front of him. She is deathly pale and her face is bruised, but under her cape I see her ample belly. My eyes meet those of my husband. Silently I measure the grief and the hope in them. Emphatically he makes a gesture with his tousled blonde head, indicating behind him.

Out of the frozen shadows looms Llud, also leading a horse – Arthur’s so familiar white one – and with his younger son slumped across his chest. My breath catches in my throat and I stand suspended for a heartbeat, giving thanks for what has been preserved, entreaty for what will need mending. Then I hurry forward.

Gently, Kai helps Rowena dismount in front of the longhouse. She turns, her eyes enquiring. “The children….?” I point toward Olwen’s hut. “You, the baby…?” Rowena gives a brief tight smile. “Both fine….but Arthur.” I see the tears glistening at the ends of her lashes, refusing to fall. Llud has halted his horse beside the ramp. Wordlessly he tells me what I need to know. Kai slips an arm around his brother and eases him down, careful to keep his head shrouded in the hood of his cloak. He lifts him gently, as he would one of the children, and begins to carry Arthur into the longhouse.

There is a sudden scurry of darting footsteps, a lilting “Auntie Lenni, Olwen wants to know if ……Mummy, Daddy” and Kaitlin appears, peering around from under her mother’s restraining arm. Her blue eyes widen with fear as she sees her father in Kai’s arms. “Daddy?” – a faint uncertain cheep. For the first time Arthur stirs – Llud has obviously dosed him liberally with the herbs I had meant for Rowena’s childbirth. Drowsily he holds out a hand and clasps his daughter’s . “I met your uncle and grandfather out hunting and took a tumble from my horse. Don’t worry Kait – it’s not half as bad as it looks.” His shrouded head slips back against his brother’s shoulder and grimly Kai continues on into the longhouse.

The next hours are a whirlwind. Rowena protests her need for more than hot water, hot food, a warm bed and a warm fire. But Arthur…….I use the binding that I commonly use after a brutal delivery. No matter how gentle you are, it is an excruciating process. Arthur bites his lip until a thin trickle of blood seeps down his chin. But if every groan of agony that escapes him smites my heart, what it does to Kai and Llud who lift and turn him, I shudder to imagine…… I tend to his scalp wounds so they will not fester and I will do a more thorough job later - but now Arthur needs sleep more than anything else.

Then I face my most arduous task of the day by far: convincing Kai to bath and lie down to rest himself, when his fingers are so tightly entwined around his brother’s that no human force will ever prise them loose. Finally it is Llud who entices him away by seeking Kai’s support while breaking the news of Drew’s death to his family. There will be a smudging of the truth to lull their grief – Drew died when thrown from his horse after both his and Arthur’s mounts shied and Llud and Kai were able to give him a decent burial. When they return from their desolate mission and Arthur still sleeps, his brother is finally persuaded to wash, to eat a bowl of chicken broth, to drink a cup of warm honeyed mead which I may just have sweetened……….

It is nearing sunset when Arthur awakens. He is still dozy and any movement is likely to bring a swell of pain, but he sits up, eats a little, drinks a little. He is able to talk a while with his father who is now well rested, be visited by his anxious daughter who is reassured to see her father looking better, console his wife who outwardly appears sound yet inwardly who knows?

I am cleansing Arthur’s scalp again when I hear what I have been waiting for – brisk rapid strides crossing the main room of the longhouse, the thud of the wicker bedroom door being thrown precipitously against the wall, the sight of Kai’s frantic face, the sound of Kai’s relieved sigh of thanksgiving, the vision of Kai’s wondrous smile…..

At last, much later that night, I sit down beside Arthur on his bed. I have done all that my skills will allow - the rest will be up to time and nature’s healing – and Kai. Arthur grins crookedly. “So Lenni, how bad is it?’’ I pretend that he is only talking about his hair. I have tried my best to make it look respectable, but it is still tattered – no strand is longer than my finger and most of them are shorter. Fondly but cautiously, I run my hand across his tufty black head – it is crisscrossed with so many angry-looking scalp wounds. “Well, I must tell you that you’ve looked better.” He takes my hand and clutches it tightly. “No Lenni, you know what I really mean.”

I smile. “You will have to rest for quite a while. But I think everything will be more than fine again. You must just be kind to yourself – and keep the strapping in place. In fact, if you don’t do that, you will learn that I can be much more frightening than any Saxon lunatic – simply ask Kai.” Arthur begins to chuckle – and then grimaces. “Oh Lenni, please don’t make me laugh.” I am well pleased now with the results of my work. He is indeed going to be more than fine.

”Do you want more sleeping potion?” Arthur makes a wry face. “No, I think I’m exhausted enough already and whatever you’ve already given me is still deadening the pain.” I stand up. “Rowena is sleeping up in my hut with the two little ones. I want to keep an eye on her and the baby. She can stay in bed for the next few days as well. And Kai is coming to watch over you – and see that you obey my instructions. Now rest.” I am at the door when I sense Arthur saying something softly behind me. “Lenni, if Rowena is still awake, remind her……” His voice fades away. “Yes, I will – although she already knows. She’s remarkable Arthur. You’re a lucky man.” And quickly I leave before he realises that I am blinded by silly tears.

Outside in the main room of the longhouse, Llud and Kaitlin are engrossed in some sort of strategy game involving wooden horses and blocks. Llud looks a little nonplussed at his granddaughter’s success – that girl has clearly inherited more than her father’s stamina. In a corner, Theo and Cedric are already fast asleep, wrapped up in a pile of fleeces and Kai is sitting in front of the fire, drowsily drinking mead. He sees me and raises his eyebrows. I nod reassuringly and he subsides in relief. Llud watches our silent exchange and smiles. I brush my lips across Kaitlin’s forehead – “You should be asleep” – and walk across to Kai.

He pats his lap and I am sorely tempted to simply collapse there and never get up again. But Rowena is waiting up in my hut with the two little ones and anyway, Arthur needs Kai far more than me – a statement that has always been true, yet never more so than tonight.

Kai walks me out into the starry night. He takes both my hands in his and swings them gently. “ Are you alright?” I smile. “No, terrible, what about you?” His beautiful lips curve. “Bloody awful – but I think we’ll get better.” “I’m sure of it” and I reach up on tiptoe and kiss his mouth. Kai looks a little startled. Compared to him as a husband, I am often not the most effusive of wives in public – especially not with two door sentries standing straight behind us. Then he grins.

I let my fingers play thoughtfully across my still-flat stomach. Should I tell him? I’ve been sure for a while. No, there’s already been far too much excitement during the past week. Let it wait for a calmer time. I turn to go up to my hut. Then I turn back. “Ensure that your brother takes his last sleeping draught – tell him it is indeed meant to be that salty. Good night sweet husband.” He looks even more startled at the unaccustomed public endearment - even if it is signed - and I continue on, smiling softly to myself.

In my bedroom. Maeve and Luc are asleep, but Rowena is still wide awake. “I thought you were sleeping,” I accuse. Rowena tries and fails to look contrite. “I’ve been waiting for you. And anyway the baby never stops moving. Is Arthur asleep yet?” I pour two cups of milk and hand one to Rowena. “Soon. He’s going to be alright – given time. He said to tell you….” His wife laughs as my hands flutter into the air like elusive butterflies, the sign for love so wide that it cannot be encompassed by everyday symbols. “I told him you would already know any way. And you do know don’t you, how much he loves you?” I see Rowena biting back tears. That’s better. She – just like Kai - needs to cry and start to mend as well.

“Oh Lenni.” Her eyes well up and spill over, making glistening rivulets down both cheeks. “The thought of leaving all this….” And she makes a sweeping gesture that embraces so much more than my firelit hut – that takes in her family and the sleeping village and beyond to Yorath. “The terror of it…..”

And suddenly Rowena is sobbing as if her heart has been broken – as she has not sobbed, she tells me between heaving gulps, for a multitude of years, since she first knew about Arthur and Kai. “Yes” I tell her ruefully, “I remember my own tirade well – out in the woods one afternoon. I banged my fists so hard against the ground that they were black and blue for weeks.” Rowena gives a snivelling laugh. “The bargains we make with life…”

I settle onto a pallet in front of the hearth and pull the sheepskins up around my waist. “Life is always a bargain. And love. Now, go to sleep, Rowena, Queen of the Celts, Princess of the Jutes. That baby needs you to rest.” I blow out the candles and lie down. I fully expect that we will both be wakeful for hours, but I am completely wrong – within minutes Rowena is breathing quietly and very soon I am engulfed in lovely dreams of Kai…….

 

Part Six

By the time, Kaitlin has been bundled off protesting to her sleeping nook and Llud is snoring in front of the hearth, Kai is so weary in mind and body again that he can hardly walk the few steps into the bedroom on steady feet. He slips silently inside, mindful not to disturb Arthur who is apparently sleeping soundly. Kai looks down at his brother in the moonlight, at his battered face and the rivers of crimson wounds under his cropped hair where Hoxel’s knife lacerated his scalp, at the unnaturally stiff way he is laying because of the immense strapping Lenni has had to bind around his hideously bruised stomach.

She has warned him to be especially scrupulous when handling his brother, that Arthur will need peculiar care and rest. Scalp abrasions are so prone to infection because they cannot be burned. Kai can smell the lavender and clove oil that Lenni has used as a remedy. But he knows it is the other injuries that concern her the most. They too cannot be cleaned and cauterized in the usual fashion or even splinted. Yet every breath that Arthur draws is painful and if his ribs do not heal in alignment, he may not be able to hold a weapon or sit astride a horse straight again.

Inner wounds, under the skin, shielded by the heart – but potentially lethal all the same. Like so many that they have inflicted on each other through the years – whether intentionally or no. Arthur with his practicality and pride, Kai so often wanting more when he had bestowed everything and knew that what he had been granted in return was so much less……Despite a mutual overwhelming love whose depths would make the oceans look paltry in comparison……

Kai sits at the bottom of his bed, head in hands - and suddenly he is wracked by the most prostrating bout of sobbing that he has suffered in years. Great paroxysms of rage and tears and grief that make Kai stuff his hands into his mouth to stifle his noisy heaving lest he wake Arthur. He lays across the bed, retching and tossing, waiting for the onslaught to pass. He has been reduced to shivering and whimpering when he sees Arthur move slightly and hears his sleepy whisper, “Kai, my heart?”

Balling his fists into his eyes, Kai walks across to his brother. He raises Arthur’s hand to his lips and kisses it gently. “What do you need little brother?” Arthur smiles, then makes a wry face. “New ribs – no, I need you in bed here with me” and he throws back the fleecy coverings.

Kai grins. “ Arthur, I love you infinitely more than life itself, but you also know that Lenni will tan my hide and nail it outside on the longhouse wall if she ever finds out - with you in this state.” Arthur’s blue eyes glow with something other than pain. “Then Lenni had better not find out my Kai.” Biting his lip to staunch another skirmish of tears, Kai climbs carefully in and feels Arthur sigh contentedly against him.

Then Kai remembers something. “Lenni said you were to take another sleeping potion. Do you know where she left it?” Arthur frowns. ‘I told her I didn’t want one. I was exhausted enough already.” His hand brushes Kai’s cheek tenderly in the darkness and feels the dampness still lingering there. “Big brother, you’ve been crying….Oh Kai beloved I love you so………and it’s all alright really…”

A few minutes later Kai can tell that Arthur has fallen asleep again, his dark head nestled into his brother’s shoulder. And all at once, as he too drifts off to sleep, Kai realises what Lenni was talking about with her cryptic reference to Arthur’s salty sleeping draught. Salt – the most precious of minerals with the ability to endure, to preserve, to sustain – the essence of tears and the beginning of healing……………

On the first fine morning of spring, Llud walks his new granddaughter around her father’s village. Her bright blue-grey eyes follow his pointing finger. Shannyn. He had been more than a little overcome when Arthur had tentatively asked if that could be the baby’s name. Llud has rarely uttered that name since the day he had returned home to find his homestead torched by the Saxons and his wife Cerys dying – it had often been too painful to even recall his first son’s name, without saying it out loud. So he could understand Arthur’s caution – but suddenly it had seemed time.

So Shannyn she is – who had arrived so quickly and almost painlessly that Lenni had had hardly had time to fill a bucket with hot water or needed to. This one is pure Rowena– although she has Arthur’s determined chin. Now Llud carries her around the side of the longhouse. “See, there’s your mother Rowena. Your coming has done so much to bind up the wounds in her mind. She’s got the two little ones on a pony. It’s about time they learned to sit astride properly. And here comes your Auntie Lenni. She’s going up to see Olwen’s daughter who is expecting a baby soon. Olwen is Grandpa’s ………very special friend. Lenni is having another child too. That’s why she’s becoming so round. But I suspect this may be the last one. Lenni is very clever at being able to look after things that way………”

“This is the scriptorium hut. Grandpa has no need to go in there – he can’t read and write, although you’ll learn. Your sister and cousins are in there now with Brother Amlodd learning the secrets of all those great books that your father likes to collect. And no doubt they are just as restless as your father and uncle were when they were young. Speaking of which……”

The baby’s eyes focus with interest as Arthur and Kai come down the longhouse ramp. Kai sweeps back the sleek dark hair from around his brother’s ear and whispers something that makes them both laugh uproariously. Llud smiles. They are going riding. Arthur stops and stoops down to his daughter. “Hello chicken.” He rubs his nose against hers. Kai grins. “Don’t make funny faces at her Arthur. You do tend to do that and you’ll only scare her.” Playfully Arthur cuffs his brother and calls for his horse.

Thoughtfully Llud watches his sons. Arthur seems almost wholly recovered physically. Other less visible scars can take longer to scab over, Llud muses rather sadly – that is if they ever really fully heal. Then he looks down at Shannyn and chides himself for an old fool. He should simply be enjoying his granddaughter and the spring sunshine. Llud waves at his sons as they gallop past and looks around contentedly. A life so full of riches…….

Arthur reins in his horse a little way out of the village. “So, my Kai, I’ll race you to the river. What’s the wager to be?” Kai shakes his head, grinning. “No, you’re not enticing me into gambling. You know I always lose. Anyway…….” His voice goes soft. “It’s a bit of a hopeless situation. You already own me for life. You’ve owned me for years and you’re stuck with me forever little brother.” Arthur quickly blinks away a rush of hot tears. Then he sighs as if in exasperation. “Yes well, I suppose there really is no point. Since you’ve already long won my most precious possession.” Kai wheels his horse curiously around. ‘What possession of yours did I ever win Arthur?” His brother smiles with blue eyes full of love. Kai goes weak with desire and feels his own gaze becoming wet, already anticipating the answer. “My heart of course.”


End file.
